As part of the statutory curriculum for pupils between the ages of 5 and 16 in Wales, every pupil learns Welsh either as a first or second language. During recent years, however, pupils’ achievements in learning Welsh as a second language have often been disappointing, especially with 11 to 16 year olds. An increasing number of pupils who study Welsh as a second language follow what’s termed a ‘short course’ for external examination at 16+ (the General Certificate of Secondary Education or GCSE). A recent report by the Welsh schools inspectorate (Estyn, 2007: 3), however, found that ‘very few pupils who follow the GCSE Welsh second language short course make good progress towards becoming fluent Welsh speakers’. At the same time, the devolved (from London) government for Wales, the Welsh Assembly Government (WAG), in its Action Plan for a Bilingual Wales (WAG, 2004:11) aims to ensure that the percentage of people in Wales able to speak Welsh has, by 2011, increased by 5 percentage points from the 2001 census figure i.e. from 20.8% to 25.8%. Increasing the number of fluent second language speakers is essential if WAG’s target is to be met. Evidence from the schools inspectorate, however, suggests that the learning and teaching of Welsh as second language, in many cases, is not as effective as it could be. It has been known for some time that teaching a second language as a ‘subject’ on a weekly or even daily basis; what is sometimes referred to as a ‘drip feed’ approach, is not as effective as Content and Language Integrated Learning pedagogies (Coyle, 2007) or the language immersion programmes commonly adopted with young learners in Wales, the Basque region, Canada and elsewhere. Despite such evidence, however, much second language learning and teaching with older pupils in Wales, as elsewhere, continues to rely heavily on ‘drip feed’ approaches. Welsh medium and bilingual education in Wales has enjoyed unprecedented success over the last 50 years (Jones and Martin-Jones, 2004). However, only 20% of pupils attend such schools and it is increasingly being recognised that the new linguistic challenge is to increase the numbers of bilingual speakers in English medium schools. Despite the concerns expressed above about second language learning and teaching some secondary schools (11 to 18), have been remarkably successful in terms of teaching Welsh as a second language. It is the factors which contribute to such schools’ success which are of particular interest to the research considered here. The first part of the paper provides a brief overview of the literature on second language learning and teaching internationally. The second part goes on to describe the Welsh context and the current ‘state of play’ with respect to the learning and teaching of Welsh as a second language in English medium school in Wales. The paper then goes on to consider the research currently being undertaken by the authors and which examines examples of learning and teaching Welsh as second language which have been comparatively successful. The research draws on both ethnographic and quantitative methods to provide detailed case studies of six schools located in linguistically ‘challenging’ contexts across Wales, where there is little naturally occurring Welsh in the community. The paper is offered as ‘work in progress’ but should be of interest to others concerned with second or third language learning and teaching at the secondary level in other contexts. There is a 5th author: Professor Janet Laugharne, University of Wales Institute Cardiff who could not be stated above due to technical reasons.

Questionnaires, group and individual interviews with pupils, teachers and parents in six secondary (11 to 18) schools in Wales.

To identify factors which have a positive influence on second language learning with particular reference to Welsh in six English medium secondary (11 to 18) schools in Wales.